K for Kokeshi was the name of the beautiful doll: #atozchallenge fiction

Kokeshi was the name of the beautiful doll, a doll with no arms and legs. But that is where her similarity with her name ended.

She wasn’t Japanese, first of all, nor made of wood. Secondly, she wasn’t painted in delicate colors and she did not stay still. To make up for her lack of walking, her body danced and twitched. In place of her hands, her shapely mouth picked and spoke and ate and laughed, her large blue eyes winked and chortled at friends and family.

The day he saw her, he knew he had to have her. He made friends, making friends with Kokeshi was the easiest thing. He gave her lips tattoos– candy stripes in rainbow colors, weighed her eyes with false eyelashes, concealed her short hair in a beehive wig. You’ll be a new woman when we’re done, he told her, a tube of paint in one hand, palette in another.  

Really? asked Kokeshi, How?

Close your eyes and sit very still, he grunted through the brush gripped between his teeth.

Hours later, when Kokeshi’s head and heart had cramped, and her heavy eyes had given way to sleep, he said, Open your eyes for my masterpiece. 

Kokeshi now had long legs, and long arms wrapped around them. Her fingers and toes ended in perfect red nails. 

Stay still, he said, or you’ll spoil the effect. Women the world over beg me to paint them and I decided to paint my best on you. 

Kokeshi gave herself a shake, and as her body moved, the limbs painted over her breasts and stomach moved like pale snakes under water. 

Keep still, he barked, you’re ruining it!

As she rolled on the floor, he howled in agony. Stop, that is my best art! At least let me take a photograph! 

She let out a sound between a laugh and a sob. Art is all very well, but I liked the earlier woman better. She moved, she lived, said Kokesi, smudging the new limbs beyond repair. 

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